The Gettysburg College Dialect Project: Regional Linguistic Variation among African American and European American English Speakers in the Lower Susquehanna Valley

葛底斯堡大学方言项目：下萨斯奎哈纳山谷非洲裔美国人和欧洲裔美国人说英语的地区语言差异在国家科学基金会的支持下，詹妮弗·布卢姆奎斯特博士将调查表征宾夕法尼亚州下萨斯奎哈纳山谷（LSV）地区方言的语言模式。尽管语言学家对LSV地区的农村，欧美宾夕法尼亚德语人口进行了广泛的研究，但宾夕法尼亚日耳曼语体并没有解释在LSV非洲裔美国人的语言中发现的模式，它们也没有完全促成该地区城市中心发展起来的地域主义类型。为了解决这一空白，项目团队将对萨斯奎哈纳河谷下游的终身居民进行一对一的社会语言学访谈，特别是城市和非洲裔美国人。此外，还将建立一个包含互动调查的项目网站，以便各种各样的参与者能够为定义方言及其边界的数据集做出贡献。葛底斯堡方言项目对方言学领域做出了贡献，因为它专注于方言研究的一个领域，这个领域在种族和地理位置（农村与城市）方面长期被忽视。这个项目不仅对方言学很有价值，而且对语言学领域也很重要，因为它调查了北部非洲裔美国人的语言模式，这些人既说地区多样性，也说不同程度的非洲裔美国人英语，这取决于社会历史和社会文化因素，如社区凝聚力或地理隔离。由于之前关于非裔美国人英语发展的绝大多数工作都集中在城市和南方的发言者身上，这个项目将为非裔美国人英语在米德兰方言地区的孤立社区中演变的方式提供丰富的信息。正是这方面的研究将补充目前在美国其他地区进行的非裔美国人英语项目。由于这项研究也将有助于建立一个方言调查网站，因此将有一个在线教育资源，供任何有兴趣了解下萨斯奎哈纳河谷，其居民或他们所说的方言的人使用。

The Gettysburg College Dialect Project: Regional linguistic variation among African American and European American English speakers in the Lower Susquehanna Valley" With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Jennifer Bloomquist will investigate the linguistic patterns that characterize the regional dialect spoken in Pennsylvania's Lower Susquehanna Valley (LSV). Although the rural, European-American Pennsylvania German speaking population of the LSV region has been studied extensively by linguists, Pennsylvania Germanisms do not account for the patterns found in the language of LSV African-American speakers, nor do they fully contribute to the types of regionalisms that have developed in the area's urban centers. In order to address this lacuna, the project team will conduct one-on-one sociolinguistic interviews with lifelong residents of the Lower Susquehanna Valley in general, and with urban and African- American speakers in particular. In addition, a project website that includes an interactive survey will be developed so that a wide variety of participants will be able to contribute to the data set that will define the dialect and its boundaries.The Gettysburg Dialect project contributes to the field of dialectology in that it focuses on an area of dialect study that has been long neglected in terms of race and geographical location (rural vs. urban). Not only is the project valuable to dialectology, but the research is also important to the field of linguistics in general because it investigates linguistic patterns among northern African-American speakers who speak both the regional variety and African-American English in varying degrees, depending on sociohistorical and sociocultural factors such as community cohesion or geographic isolation. Since the vast majority of work done previously on the development of African-American English has focused on urban and southern speakers, this project will contribute a wealth of information to the ways in which African-American Englishes have evolved in isolated communities in the midland dialect region. It is this aspect of the research that will complement projects currently underway on African-American English in other regions of the United States. Because the research will also contribute to the construction of a dialect survey website, there will be an online educational resource for anyone interested in learning about the Lower Susquehanna Valley, its residents, or the dialect(s) that they speak.